Malapportionment and devolution
Malapportionment is the creation of electoral districts with highly unequal ratios of voters to representatives. For instance, in the United States, each state has 2 Senators regardless of population, even though the most populous state has over 66 times the population of the least populous state. This means that a person living in the least populous state (Wyoming) has 66 times the Senate voting power, and hence Senate representation, of a person living in the most populous state (California). In the following map of the United States, populations have been rounded to the nearest million. While it is true that the Presidency and the House of Representatives provide better representation, there are still many things that are difficult to do without Senate approval. Solving this problem is hard because the constitution requires either unanimous agreement of all states, or a vote from two-thirds of the Senate, depending on the chosen approach, to get the necessary constitutional changes. However, there is one other mechanism by which it could potentially be solved, and that is by the creation of new states, and hence new Senators. The most obvious way to do this is to split existing states. Splitting states evenly into the minimum number of parts such that every part has a population of 10 million or less creates 13 new states; going down to 5 million or less creates 42 new states in total. Malapportionment by unequal devolution A subtler type of malapportionment is that created by unequal levels of devolution. For instance, in the United Kingdom, certain favoured parts of the country - most notably, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (populations approx. 5, 3 and 2 million respectively) - have been given devolved powers via a separate legislative body (e.g. the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly). Recently, devolution has been (and is still in the process of being) extended to certain metropolitan areas within England (which non-Brits should note is separate from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). However, this is happening in a piecemeal fashion, and many areas of England (population 55 million) are missing out. Additionally, the restriction of this devolution to metropolitan areas carries the risk of future instability and possible collapse of the system. For instance, the metropolitan county councils, along with the London County Council, were abolished in 1986, and it is widely believed that this was down to their propensity to conflict with the national Conservative government of the time, due to the left-leaning tendencies of metropolitan areas in general. One way to solve the problem would be to devolve to the 9 regions of England, making them "provinces" with the same constitutional status as Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The following map shows the populations of all 12 "provinces", rounded to the nearest million. While their populations are certainly not equal, this is still better than the current situation in which many parts of England have no devolution whatsoever. It should be noted that a similar thing has been tried before in the case of North East England (shown above with a population of approx. 3 million). However, the level of devolution on offer was not equal to that of other devolved areas such as Scotland, while the singling out of North East England may have led to the perception that it was being used as a guinea-pig. In future, it would probably be better to create a unified, country-wide system of devolution so that all devolved areas (or "provinces") are able to feel that they are being treated equally. Finally, the use of the word "country" to refer to Scotland and Wales, and "parliament" to refer to the Scottish Parliament (while, for instance, the word "assembly" is used in Wales), may be inadvisable. First of all, it creates a false perception of sovereignty that can lead to resentment from both sides. And secondly, it may lead to psychological biases that result in different treatment of different devolved areas. Category:Ideas and concepts